


"After The Game"

by Mooninscorpio



Category: Person of Interest (TV), Person of Interest tv
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 10:38:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2306651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mooninscorpio/pseuds/Mooninscorpio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As John begins his ordinary new life under his Machine-given identity, he struggles to keep a low profile.  One night John spots Taylor and his Dad Sam Carter after a basketball game at Madison Square Garden.  He follows them to Joss' old apartment as he finally decides to "look in on Taylor" as Joss had asked him to.  He has an emotional encounter with both and receives a last gift from Joss before the night is over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"After The Game"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [all PoI Discussion Forum fans](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=all+PoI+Discussion+Forum+fans).



"After The Game"

John had a rare night off from the Numbers and was near Madison Square Garden. He saw the crowds leaving after the game. He was thinking about the nights where Joss and Taylor would watch the Knicks on tv, while Joss would quickly dress some of his minor wounds after one of his skirmishes with a Number, and he'd linger for a few moments to ask Taylor what the score was before heading back to his empty apartment. He'd spotted Taylor and his Dad leaving the Garden, and taking the crosstown bus back home. He took the subway, which was much slower to give them time to reach home before he showed up. He was now standing outside her apartment, gathering his thoughts. He had to do this, he promised Joss and it was nearly ten months since she was gone, till he was able to make good on her last wishes.

Looking up at her old bedroom window caused memories of her to flood back. The occasional beer they shared parked during a stakeout. The trips to Harlem to some of the clubs she knew conducted illegal activity, only a detective could know and have access to. The night she, Zoe and Sam worked as bait for the Ladykiller Number. The feel of her body as she accidentally bumped into him, while attempting to decoy that Number. The rush of dizzy sensations when that first contact with her luscious body assailed his senses. The dangerous nights of pain and exhaustion there.  
The nights where Joss' apt. was a safe haven when he was injured and she bandaged him up speedily, and then sent him back "on active duty" again. Reality shocked him back to the present as he realized that Joss' husband lives there now, with Taylor's grandmother three blocks nearby. He's put this off so too long, partly because of the Machine's new threat from Vigillance and Samaritan, but partly because of his inner pain and inability to put words to his ongoing grief.

He waits until he sees some lights are on and some activity of them settling down. He climbs upstairs, trying to rehearse a coherent introduction. He comes upon their modest doorway and then knocks softly and hears Taylor's voice and footsteps towards the door. As John raises his hand in greeting, Taylor recognizes John instantly as the Man In The Suit and his mother's guardian angel who saved him from Elias' kidnappers.  
"Who's at the door Taylor?" a deep voice questions. John greets Sam Carter, a well built man and sees the look of questioning surprise on his face.  
"Dad don't' worry. This is John, Mom's good friend i told you about who saved my life when the mobsters tried to kidnap me. "Taylor's dad is surprised at John's appearance, but he sees something in John's stance and demeanor that shouted "ex-military" and the quiet vigilance in his expression. He had saved his son - it was okay to let him in and offer him hospitality and gratitude.  
"Good to meet you John ---" faltering for his surname.  
"Reese" John added as he leaned to shake Sam's and Taylor's hands, noticing the young man was nearly five foot eleven now, with Joss' same high arched eyebrows and alert expression.  
"Can I get you a beer or something? We were just at the basketball game and I'm a little thirsty for another one." Sam offered. John accepted and Taylor was sent to grab two cold ones from the kitchen.

"Were you in the military?" Sam opens up the conversation in generalities, hoping for a common ground.  
"Yeah, Army, Bhagdad. Met Joss just before she went into the service herself. Finally got her to marry me while on leave. She rose up in the ranks pretty quick, with her education and all. Especially when she was special interrogator trying to get those al-Quaeda suicide bombers to talk." he took a deep breath and then looked away.  
"After my tour, I came back with PTSD. Couldn't admit I needed help and Joss -- she everything to get me off my ass to get help from the VA. But it was so bad with me that she was afraid of me, what I could do to her, to Taylor. I slept with my gun, sometimes grabbed Taylor and hide in the other room, on the floor. You know what i'm talking about?" he stopped suddenly looking at John's emotionless face.

"Yeah, i do know. And I still know. Can't talk about what I've done to anyone." John sighed as he took a sip of beer.  
"I was a good soldier in Special Forces, Rangers. Then I was recruited into the CIA afterwards. I had a girlfriend who was a nurse. I gave her up though, because --- " he fished for the right words to describe his stupidity back then.  
"my life was not normal, she wouldn't have been able to handle it." he saw Sam thoughtfully stroking his chin.  
So Taylor did tell him correctly. That John, his ex-wife's friend was a "true badass who saved me from the mobsters".  
He could only guess what covert tactics he used. He'd heard enough about the legendary Special Forces ops while in Iraq. Taylor had come out to join them in the living room and sat transfixed by John's story, which he'd never heard before.  
"You're a man now, son, so you can hang with us and listen in."

 

After a few minutes together, John begins his story…

"After I got out of the service, I lived on the streets, without any purpose to my life. One night, I was on the subway, drunk out of my mind, and a bunch of young punks started some trouble with me. I fought all of them off, hurt them bad enough to teach them a lesson. The police took me in for questioning. I was ready to give myself up, tired of living on the streets. Then your mother came in and introduced herself. She was very smart and guessed right away about my being in the military, -- my special training skills. She offered to help me find my way back into society. She was the first person in a very long time, to care about me. She saw through the bum that I'd become, and probably guessed I'd done some pretty bad things in the past, in the military. But she kept those thoughts to herself. Anyway, I was close to just giving myself up when some people, some lawyers came to the precinct, paid my bail and took me to meet someone important." There was a long pause as he was deciding whether to go on to disclose Finch. "I was saved by someone, whom I didn't even know, was given a new job, a new purpose, and your mother sometimes helped me and my new co workers help stop bad things from happening to innocent people. One of them was you, Taylor." John paused to look at Taylor, who still sat, fascinated by his tale.

"Your mother came to me for help and I helped her rescue you. She was such a brave person, she even saved the life of the person responsible for kidnapping you in the first place." Taylor and Dad stared wide eyed at him in disbelief. "Because of that, he lived, and he ended up helping us to avenge her death. I tried to avenge it but I couldn't find that person who pulled the trigger, and nearly died of my own wounds. I wish I'd have died too… she gave her life up for me, saved me from more bullets. Braver than anyone I ever knew back in special forces."

Those last words jolted Taylor suddenly and he beckoned John to follow him into Joss' old bedroom.  
He then opens Joss' night stand drawer, pulls out an envelope, and silently gives it to John to open. In his hands he sees the old photo of himself and Jessica in Mexico. Shocked speechless that Joss had this in her possession the entire time and never mentioned it, he can only surmise in a few shocked seconds that she somehow had access to his classified file at some point. Taylor tells him that after her death, while gathering up her possessions, he found the photo hidden underneath her jewelry box. She told Taylor that it belonged to a good friend of hers, someone special who had helped her many times in her work in the police dept., and someone who she owed hers & Taylor's lives to, as he had saved him from harm.

"When Mom showed me the photo, after she got me back from the kidnappers, I put two and two together and recognized you as the man who saved me and was with me near the subway station when I saw Mom again."  
Taylor cleared his throat as he explained further.  
"But after she died, I found a note with your name on it along with the photo saying just a few words "give this photo to him if he comes to look in on you. You'll know who he is when you see him." Joss had scribbled on the front of the envelope.

Taylor's dad appears in the doorway, John looks his direction and explains that he and Jessica were lovers, planned to be together, once he fully left the army, but after 9/11, his military activities resumed and because of his assignments overseas, he never got a chance to get back to her and she'd married someone else instead and because he was still abroad, he'd found out too late that she had been in a fatal car accident. He left out the details of his near fatal assignment in Ordos and the entire New Rochelle episode.

Taylor put the photo back in the envelope and John noticed another piece of paper inside it.  
"Mom wanted you to have this, it really belongs to you. Im sorry you and your special lady didn't get a chance to be together. I think she should've married you no matter what you did before. You would've protected her all the time, just like you protected Mom & me." John was speechless as he heard Taylor's heartfelt words. He was almost out of his teen years now, and yet, still had the honesty of youth. Joss taught him all the right values in the short tragic time she had with her son.

"Thanks for being there for Joss and Taylor John. You're always welcome here anytime. I'll see to it I do right by my boy, after so many years of not being there for the both of them. But at least towards the end, she did get to see me get the help I needed. She gave me my second chance to change." Carter coughed emotionally unable to talk.

Taylor stands up from the bed, almost as tall as his father now.  
"Thank you." John is overcome with emotion, as he accepts his offer to come by and continue checking up on Taylor from time to time.

Before leaving, John turns around, facing the two bereft men, and decided to tell them both another truth, one that they both deserved to hear.  
"Earlier that night, while we were trying to take down the corrupt police organization, we had to hide out from them. We thought we were really going to die then since we were surrounded. But she brought in the head of their organization all on her own. The night she died, I was with her by the precinct. One of the corrupt police officers shot me first, then shot her as she tried to protect me. He got away after she shot him. In her last moments, she called out for you Taylor." Reese's eyes were filing up now. He had to say the words.  
" Her last wish was for me to promise her that I'd look in on you. She died in my arms. John finished, his head down. He headed for the door too overcome to look at them.  
"Don't tell anyone I was here. I have to be very, very careful in my job now. But I promise --- i'll look in on you Taylor."

"Thank you John"  
"Thanks John, my Mom would've been happy with that." John heard their parting words.

He walked back onto the street, blinking back tears for what could have been had she lived. For Taylor's premature loss of a mother. For an ex-husband's mistakes with his wife and his late redemption. John's blurry gaze fell upon a couple standing on the corner, pushing a stroller. He remembered Joss' words as showed him her Caesarean stitches that fateful night, her most painful, terrifying moment in her life, yet afterwards, the most beautiful. The man kissed his wife, and helped her pull her coat collar up, and then gently pushed the stroller down onto the curb to cross.

John pulled his collar up against the chill also as he watched the pair disappear from view. He knew he'd probably never live a normal life, like the anonymous couple. He'd come to terms with that long ago.

Joss' last words: "don't let this ---", his mind struggled to complete her final wish. Then, it came to him: "change you." he added silently to himself now. She had the picture of him the whole time. She knew who I really was. Yet she never told me. She believed in me, she waited for me to change. The thought of it completely washed over him like healing balm over his old wounds. A rare feeling of peace came over him as he began walking the long trek back to his own apartment.


End file.
